Television

Friday, June 16, 2017

Can students be searched?

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution
guarantees people’s right to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and a series of court
decisions has laid the groundwork for interpreting what “unreasonable” means
when it comes to minors on school grounds, reported the New York Times.

A key question is whether school administrators have more
leeway than law enforcement in deciding whether to search students, said
Richard S. Vacca, a senior fellow with the Commonwealth Educational Policy
Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“School folks can’t be deliberately indifferent to something
that could be harmful, dangerous or disruptive. They’ve got to do something,”
he said. “But how far can they go?”

One influential decision on the subject came from the
Supreme Court more than three decades ago. In 1980, a high school student’s
purse was searched by a vice principal after she had been accused of smoking
cigarettes in the bathroom. The administrator found evidence that she was
selling marijuana.

The student took issue with the search, and her case
eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which decided in 1985 that
the search was “not unreasonable.” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote in an
opinion that “students within the school environment have a lesser expectation
of privacy than members of the population generally.”

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.